While I would have been interested in an adaptation of The Last of Us in general, seeing that Craig Mazin is involved in the production raises my interest significantly. We learned back in March 2020 that Mazin is teaming with Neil Druckmann on adapting the Sony PS game franchise to a live-action series at HBO as a co-production with Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions and then in November 2020 it got a series order without noting how many episodes it would be.
Now, a new bit of casting has surfaced that’s definitely welcome to see as Anna Torv has joined the project to take on the role of Tess, “a smuggler and hardened survivor in a post-pandemic world. In the original video game, Tess works with Joel to survive and smuggle weapons in and out of Boston. She also accompanies Joel on the seemingly impossible mission to smuggle Ellie to the Fireflies.”
Torv has some really great roles in her career overall as we’re currently rewatching all of Fringe these days and she was fantastic in Mindhunter.
The previously announced cast includes Pedro Pascall, Bella Ramsey, Merle Dandrige, Nico Parker, Gabriel Luna, Jeffrey Pierce, Murray Bartlett, and Con O’Neill.
The plan is for the series to cover the original game as conceived by Druckmann and some of the elements from the second game that may make sense. Mazin received a lot of critical acclaim for bringing out the five-episode Chernobyl series and it’s easy to imagine this as a smart paring for an end of the world storyline.
Plot Concept: The story takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.
